Rhodes was a warrior who staked everything on his reputation until he lost a fight, presumably to the protagonist. (Adam seems to show up in many of these stories, but not all of them, so if they’re meant to have Adam connecting them all, there are huge gaps.) The fight is essentially identical to the Tower Knight fight from Demon’s Souls or the Iron Golem from Dark Souls, minus the need to stagger the boss and then attack. You’ll do most of your damage by attacking the legs, which is a problem, because the sacrifice you make is a decrease in attack power. That will make every fight longer, requiring the same level of precision over a longer period. If you’re good at these types of games, this might be a worthwhile sacrifice to make early. Clearly, I’m not. The key here is to stay close and prepare to dodge a variety of attacks - Rhodes uses energy waves if you get too far from him, and the horizontal ones can be very difficult to dodge. His desperation move summons a bunch of minions, which aren’t as annoying as they could be. His attacks will damage them, and they don’t seem to respawn if they die. He’ll summon more at 1/4 health, and you get a brief opportunity for some attacks during each summon. His desperation also unlocks a series of six wind blades at alternating diagonals, which are easy to dodge if you’re not also dealing with minions or at the edge of the platform. The worst move of all is a series of homing bullets. Get too far from them, and they’ll start flying parallel to the floor, making it nearly impossible to lure them into the ground. Get hit by one, and the rest will surely also hit you. Get hit by anything else while they’re tracking you… well, you get the idea.

Before I describe the last of the seven Avatars of Sin, let me attempt to recap the story so far, as I understand it. The sequence of events is unclear, but we’re playing as a character with no memory, who is called “The Sinner” or “the wanderer” in-game (and it’s only the pictures that give any real indication that the wanderer in the cutscenes is supposed to be our character, and they’re absent from my videos because the developers don’t seem to care about the story), and “Adam” in all of the game’s promotional materials. Adam went on a journey, during which a woman named Chanel fell in love with them. I assume that they traveled together to Levin Undok’s place, and Levin Undok tried and failed to seduce Adam, eventually becoming so jealous that she became the Avatar of Envy. Adam later ditched Chanel as well, leaving her to become the Avatar of Lust. Along the way, Adam told Camber Luce of the cursed treasure that turned him into the Avatar of Gluttony, defeated Rhodes and turned him into the Avatar of Pride, and passed through the country where Yordo took the throne he didn’t want and became the Avatar of Sloth. It’s really unclear what those last two events had to do with each other, if anything. Also, Faiz Tilus tried to become immortal and became the Avatar of Greed, with no apparent input from Adam at all. You’ll either have to trust me on all of this or look up videos of first playthroughs. I bring this up to illustrate how Adam is, at most, the Forrest Gump of sin here. Momentous things happen, and Adam is often there, pointing to where they got shot in the but-tock.

Angronn is a rock golem that is the Avatar of Wrath. That’s about all I got out of the cutscene. Either people made a golem and it became wrathful, or maybe, with a bit of creative interpretation, Adam’s return to their hometown provoked such wrath that the rocks were animated in this form. Either way, this place is the “beginning and end” of Adam’s journey, so clearly the boss you’re intended to fight last. This is good, because the sacrifice you make is utterly awful, unless you’re one of those people who just never gets hit. To fight Angronn, you have to give up your armor, decreasing your defense, and also lose the healing over time effect that makes the random chip damage from other bosses somewhat bearable. That would seem to be a minor sacrifice in this particular fight, where the biggest threat is being punched off the ledge entirely, but most of the time, the only way to dodge the punch is to get in the path of a falling sword or roll through a pool of lava, and the tiny bits of damage you take from that just keep adding up. Attacking Angronn can be difficult, because the only target you get are his fists, and they tend to be trying to damage you most of the time they’re within range. Angronn has a variety of attacks that don’t leave his fists exposed, and if he feels like it, he can just use those forever and leave you no opportunity to attack. At least you can hit him with the swords he throws at you, doing a fair bit of damage, but he can also hit you by knocking the swords around, which tends to happen when he’s otherwise giving you an opening to hit his fists. The lava balls he throws will probably kill you if they hit you and will definitely box you into a corner if they don’t, and he can also summon fiery minions that just explode. After all of that is done, he’ll destroy parts of the ledge that you’re standing on, forcing you to retreat until you’re on a tiny strip of land that doesn’t give you much room to dodge. If you haven’t mostly worn him down by then, you probably won’t win. Did I mention that this is probably the longest fight, which would be great if you were recovering HP the whole time?

Of course, there’s a final boss once you defeat the first seven, surprising no one who’s played a video game before. But I’ll get to that next time.

Adam is the Sinner, the wanderer whose presence had some tangential connection to most (or all) of the sins of the bosses we’ve fought so far. From what I can tell, Adam brought the Avatars of Sin into the world intending to reason with them, but that effort was ultimately futile, and Adam now fights to redeem their own original sin, that which caused all of the other sins. I don’t really know what that means in a lore sense, but in games like this, everything translates into “kill the thing in front of you”, which is simple enough to understand. However, it’s much easier said than done. While there’s no further sacrifice to fight Adam, reaching this point requires making all of the previous sacrifices, and there’s no way to recover any of them. You’ll have the extra health from redeeming all of the bosses, and that’s it. Adam the boss has a similar moveset to Adam the protagonist’s, but with significant added moves. He’s got a lightning spell in addition to the javelins, a fire buff that periodically explodes, sword moves like few video game protagonists can match, and the ability to auto-parry any frontal attack. The patterns are recognizable, and like most of the bosses in the game, the key to victory lies in learning how to react to each attack and then doing that flawlessly, every time. Healing is a riskier proposition here than in most fights, since Adam has ways to hit you from anywhere in the arena, but most of Adam’s attacks leave a bit of a grace period after you dodge, allowing you to attack or recover as appropriate. Adam initially attacks with a straight sword and shield, featuring a devastating combo if you fail to parry, but you can riposte for quite a bit of damage yourself. After you deplete his health by about a third, he’ll switch to the greatsword, which can’t be parried as far as I can tell. I’ve watched some expert playthroughs online, and they all agree that you can’t parry the greatsword. Finally, at the two-thirds mark, Adam sets his sword and armor on fire. This adds some area damage to a few of his attacks and introduces a new timing element - if you’re too close when the armor explodes, you’ll take a bit of damage and your attack will fail. I think the attacks become a lot simpler at that point, though, and the second strike of the combo will never hit you, leaving a wide opening to attack.

Finally, Adam the Sinner recognizes that the only way to end everything is to take all of the sin into themself. We never get to see the end result of this, or any suggestion of what this does to the world, the people who became Avatars of Sin, or anything else. Beating the game unlocks the Blades of Gluttony, which I already had when I started this LP, and the Nightmare Challenge, which I’ll demonstrate as best I can in the next video. Updates will probably slow down from this point, but we’re not nearly done with this game yet.

That fight is absolutely the product someone being disappointed that Gwyn wasn’t the hardest boss in Dark Souls.

Gwyn could be easily beaten by parries, so make Adam immune.
Gwyn didn’t parry, so make Adam parry.
Enemy designer prefers bosses to drag the hell on, so make Adam perfect at parrying.
Other bosses had at least a second phase, so give Adam a third.
Gwyn’s what the Chosen Undead’s pushed to become, so give Adam better versions of every single ability.

So, just in case you thought this game was way too easy and the appeal of artificial challenges like “beat the bosses in the reverse order of what you did previously” or “make all of the sacrifices before fighting any of the bosses” isn’t enough for you, the game features a Challenge Mode. It’s got room for more, and the press releases hint at multiple “new game plus” modes that I haven’t seen any sign of, but the first entry in the list is the Nightmare Challenge, and I can hardly imagine what more you could want. The added challenge in this boss rush game is… a boss rush. But this boss rush doesn’t give you a chance to recover and restock between bosses. In fact, if you’re not fast enough, there isn’t even a between. It seems as though only certain pairs of bosses will show up together - Rhodes shows up while you’re fighting Faiz Tilus unless you’re really fast, but I’ve never seen Chanel appear before I finish off Rhodes. The good news is that many of the fights are simpler than their equivalents in the main game, often removing moves that make no sense in this arena or wouldn’t be counterable, including many of the desperation attacks. There are also no arena gimmicks like ice holes, tentacles, or phallic rocks to hide behind (sadly), and you don’t need to make any sacrifices to enter this mode, so you can fight at full strength, although it’s probably possible to bail out of the main game at any time to take on the challenge with, say, two health upgrades but minus your shield and items, if that sounds like a more attractive way to do it. I didn’t dedicate much time to trying to perfect my performance for this video, since I have more playthroughs of the main game to go, so I’ll return later with potentially more skill. For now, this is the Nightmare Challenge. It’s probably equal parts fun and tedious.

Gameplay-wise, we’ve now seen everything I’m aware of Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption having to offer. I’m going to confess right now that there’s only so much I can do to make future videos of exactly the same thing interesting, and that probably equates to “nothing at all”. But I hope that there’s some value in seeing someone learn from their mistakes and improve their performance, and there is at least a new ending to look forward to. If any of that appeals to you, I’ll be taking on the bosses in pairs from now on, since I can reliably beat each one within a few tries. This is a great time to guess how many deaths I’ll have for the second run. If not, I’ll let you know which videos have any new content in them. This is not one of them.

I’ve been going back to Nightmare mode every so often to see whether I can improve my performance and perhaps find a reliable way to beat the early bosses so I can get some practice on the later ones. I’ve got some ideas, particularly using a more reliable controller, but so far, I still die to Rhodes far more often than not. Speaking of dying more often than not, this video happens to contain both of the bosses I beat without dying in my earlier playthrough. Has my performance improved? If you guessed how many times I’d die, you might want to revise that after seeing this performance.

This game is finally out on Steam if anyone was waiting to buy it. It’s also got new content. It’s not much, but considering how little there actually is of this game, it’s a fairly sizeable update. If anyone wants to wait and see for themselves: There’s a new boss, and two new boss weapons you can get by fighting the new boss. One is pretty good, and I don’t much care for the other yet. There are also three new game modes - one where you run faster, but you’re not invulnerable during dodge rolls; one where you have to beat the game without dying; and one with both conditions AND all of the sacrifices made at the start. I don’t plan to attempt that last one. The last thing they added is a new “Illusion” challenge mode that just lets you train against the bosses with no sacrifices. I guess it’s something.

I’m hoping to post videos a bit more often so I can catch up with the new content. With that in mind, here are a couple of familiar fights with no new surprises, but the lack of increased health is starting to make things dicey.

And here’s the end of the second run, where I beat exactly the same final boss with significantly less health. I’ve mentioned a few times how big a difference this makes, but here’s a graphic I whipped up in a couple of minutes to show just how much less health I have. The top screenshot shows my bars from the first fight with Adam, including all of the health upgrades. The bottom screenshot is from this video.

By now, everything in this game is old news. I completed one more playthrough before the update came along and added more actual content, but the potential variety in the game is ultimately limited by two factors: The order in which you defeat the bosses, and whether you redeem or banish each one as you go. For those who can’t do the math or don’t think this game is worth the effort, that’s 5,040 possible orders of combat and a further 128 possible redeem/banish combinations. It probably doesn’t surprise anyone that the order in which you fight the bosses is irrelevant with respect to the ending - it would be rather cruel to center the game around the gimmick of having to choose sacrifices and then hide content behind doing it a specific way. Of the remaining options, most are parceled in some fashion into the two endings we’ve already seen. There is one specific set of conditions that leads to the remaining, hidden ending, and your first guess is probably correct. I can only refer to this as… the Thirst Run.

And here we are. At the end of everything, there’s one challenge left to overcome. Forced to make it to the end with exactly one health upgrade, we fight a new version of Adam that’s got new moves and new abilities. The alternate version of the cutscene leading to it leads me to believe that there’s some sort of significance to this change, but I can’t figure out what that might be. In any case, completing this fight gives us what little reward there is to be had in this game, and the third ending.

A few months after the game came out, there was an update that added a few new things: A new boss, two new weapons, three new gameplay modes plus a practice mode, and most importantly, an option to restart the game without having to complete it first. I had intended just to keep trying Nightmare mode until I beat it, but when the update launched, I put that on hold to try out some of the new content. Here’s what I managed in the meantime, and the first bit of the new stuff.

I apologize for not coming up with a decent April Fool’s thing this year. I normally enjoy those, but this time around, I was out of town all weekend doing fun things like playing Yoshi games and watching Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure with my mom. (For the record, she’s enjoying Stardust Crusaders but enjoyed the earlier parts more.) I’m planning to do something hopefully mildly interesting with Dark Souls once I’m done with this game, so pretend I posted something related to that. Anything other than yet another playthrough, which I recorded in one session but couldn’t manage to edit down into a single video of a length I was comfortable with. So I just chopped it in half awkwardly in the middle. April Fool’s. I’m skipping some of the fights because I either couldn’t beat them with the Pick of Chastity or found them too tedious even for an LP of Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption. It’s a really good weapon, though, in all but one respect. I just need to get used to it.

The run ends without a whole lot of fanfare, but I think I’m getting a little better at the game. I found time to cram in a few more Modic fights, but I still haven’t unlocked the second new weapon yet. That will come in due course.

I may have to make a somewhat contentious statement: I think the Trial of Speed is a clever idea, and a nice spin on the original premise of the game. Everyone knows that the secret to success in a game of this type is to always be rolling and to use those i-frames to avoid every attack. Taking away that invulnerability completely changes the face of the game and forces you to rethink your strategy in most cases. It is, at least, a significant variation that wouldn’t be possible to emulate in the vanilla game. That said, it’s still exactly the same collection of bosses, so I’m familiar with most of their tricks by now. Let’s see how much that actually helps me.

So, at this point, I had enough faith in my abilities to record an entire playthrough in one session rather than stopping after every couple of bosses. Somehow, I continued to think that even playing in a mode that’s distinctly more difficult than the playthroughs I’ve done before. Some bosses are not significantly more difficult without dodge roll invincibility. Most of them are not in this video.

I’m on record saying some pretty nice things about the Trial of Speed and what it brings to this game. For the most part, I stand by them. There’s just one problem: Some of the fights were really designed for you to roll through attacks, and it shows. Camber Luce and Chanel sort of worked that way, but Angronn and Adam are definitely in that mold. Had I not left Angronn for last, I expect that this playthrough would have been much more frustrating. That’s hard to imagine.